CDC Reports Drop in Adult Smoking, But Death Toll and Health Costs Are Still Growing; Congress, States Should Implement Proven Solutions

... WASHINGTON Nov. 13 -- The following is a...(Logo: A HREF http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080918/CFTFKLOGO...Two new reports released today by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control...The good news from the first CDC report is that the adult smoking rate...

Two new reports released today by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC) show that the adult smoking rate in the United States
has declined to under 20 percent for the first time, but smoking rates are
not declining fast enough to reduce tobacco's growing toll in lives and
health care costs. These reports confirm that we know how to reduce tobacco
use, but elected officials at all levels must resist complacency and step
up the fight against the nation's number one cause of preventable death. It
is especially critical that the incoming Administration and Congress
provide long-missing national leadership by enacting legislation granting
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority over tobacco
products.

The good news from the first CDC report is that the adult smoking rate
declined to 19.8 percent in 2007 from 20.8 percent in 2006. This is the
first statistically significant one-year decline in adult smoking since
2003, but it still leaves the nation far short of achieving the U.S.
Surgeon General's national goal of reducing adult smoking to 12 percent or
less by 2010.

The bad news from the second CDC report is that smoking rates are not
declining fast enough to reduce the devastating health and financial toll
of smoking in the United States. This report, which updates official
government statistics regarding the toll of cigarette smoking, found that
from 2000 to 2004, at least 443,000 people in the U.S. died prematurely
each year as a result of smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke, an
increase from 438,000 deaths annually for 1997-2001. This report also found
that smoking costs the nation $193 billion per year in health care
expenditures and productivity losses, up from a previous estimate of $167
billion. The new total includes $96 billion in health care costs and $96.8
billion in productivity losses. This report also found that smoking results
in an astounding 5.1 million years of potential life lost in the U.S. each
year.

These reports were published in the November, 14, 2008, issue of the
CDC journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).

These new reports follow an earlier CDC report that found the smoking
rate among high school students -- 20 percent in 2007 -- has not declined
significantly since 2003, following a 40 percent decline between 1997 and
2003.

The lack of greater progress in reducing smoking is troubling and
inexcusable given the overwhelming scientific evidence of what works to
reduce tobacco use. We know how to win the fight against tobacco use. But
we will not win it -- and our progress could even reverse -- without the
political leadership to implement proven solutions at all levels of
government. Recent landmark reports by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and
the President's Cancer Panel agreed on the proven, science-based measures
that Congress and the states must take:

-- At the federal level, Congress should enact the long-overdue legislation

granting the FDA authority over tobacco products. The U.S. House of

Representatives on July 30 voted 326 to 102 to approve this legislation,

cessation programs at CDC-recommended levels. Most states have failed to

fund these programs at recommended levels and spend only about three

percent of the billions of dollars they collect each year from the

tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes on tobacco prevention and

cessation. The states are spending $718.1 million this year on tobacco

prevention programs, which is 269 times less than the health care and

productivity costs of smoking.

Reductions in adult smoking have been largely the result of efforts at
the state and local level, including higher tobacco taxes, a growing number
of smoke-free laws and well-funded tobacco prevention and cessation
programs in some states. The few states and localities that have
implemented a comprehensive strategy that includes all three measures have
been especially successful. For example, Washington state and New York City
have reduced adult smoking rates to 16.5 percent and 16.9 percent
respectively, well below the national rate.

While continued state and local efforts are critical, the IOM report
concluded that the states alone cannot solve the tobacco problem. The
federal government, which has largely been absent from the fight to reduce
tobacco use, must provide essential leadership, starting with granting the
FDA authority over tobacco products. According to the IOM, a combined and
more aggressive state-federal effort can achieve an ambitious, but
attainable goal for the nation: "To reduce tobacco use so substantially
that it is no longer a significant public health problem."

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